Overview
- A further 17% reported using German plus at least one other language at home, with 26% of them mainly using German and 74% mainly another language.
- In total, 15.5 million people said they spoke predominantly or exclusively a non-German language at home, most often Turkish (14%), Russian (12%) and Arabic (9%).
- Among the 21.4 million people with a migration background, 22% spoke only German at home, 55% were multilingual and 23% used no German at home.
- Destatis published the final 2024 results on February 17, shortly before International Mother Language Day on February 21.
- The Microcensus language question has been asked since 2017 and, as a self-reported ~1% sample of private households, it excludes people in communal accommodations and does not assess language proficiency.